FREMONT, Ohio — “so glad we got our boys outta that church nursery when we did!”
That was one Sandusky County resident’s reaction on social media to renewed reporting about child sex abuse allegations involving state Rep. Gary Click, the Republican lawmaker who spent 19 years as pastor of Fremont Baptist Temple before quietly stepping away from the pulpit last year.
Another commenter, who said they knew Click personally, described longstanding discomfort with his interactions with children.
“First of all, I know this man as well and I’ve always thought something wasn’t right with him the way he was around the younger children always creep me out,” the person wrote.
The comments are among several reactions circulating on social media following TiffinOhio.net’s reporting this week on the former pastor’s police investigation. They reflect anger, distrust and concern among some residents of the county Click represents in the Ohio House, particularly those familiar with his years in church leadership.
The allegations originated in September 2025, when Oregon child welfare officials forwarded a third-party report accusing Click and another man of physically and sexually abusing a child who had attended Fremont Baptist Temple. Fremont police interviewed the person identified as the alleged victim, who denied being abused by either man. Click also denied the allegations. Police closed the case, and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation declined further involvement.
The investigation was first reported in November 2025 by D.J. Byrnes of The Rooster. TiffinOhio.net’s examination of police records this week, alongside its reporting on Click’s previously undisclosed departure from church leadership, has returned the allegations to public attention.
Click has forcefully rejected the accusations. In an interview published Friday by StayTunedSandusky.com, he described them as politically motivated.
“Clearly, the allegations against me are not only false but malicious,” Click said.
Parents revisit their experiences with Click’s church
The reactions carry particular weight in Fremont, where Click was not simply a politician whose name appeared on ballots and campaign signs. He led Fremont Baptist Temple from 2006 until March 2025, serving generations of local families while building a second career in state politics. His official Ohio House biography lists decades of work involving youth ministry, Christian education and children’s programs.
For the commenter who expressed relief about removing their sons from the church nursery, the allegations prompted a retrospective judgment about their family’s experience. Another person’s account went further, describing personal unease about Click’s behavior around younger children.
Neither comment independently establishes misconduct, and the Fremont police report does not identify an allegation involving the church nursery. But the reactions illustrate how the news is being received by some people with personal connections to the community Click served for nearly two decades.
Others expressed anger or an absence of surprise. “Not surprising. He is a complete scumbag,” one commenter wrote. Another used sarcasm to convey a similar sentiment: “I’m more shocked than when my printer breaks down before a major deadline.”
The comments do not establish what the entire Fremont community thinks of Click. They do, however, document a response sharply different from the image of the longtime pastor and family-values advocate that Click has cultivated throughout his political career.
Click’s pastoral departure has also become part of that discussion. He says he stepped down as lead pastor at the end of March 2025, six months before police received the abuse referral. But TiffinOhio.net found no public announcement from Click, his legislative office, his campaign or the church disclosing the transition at the time. Fremont Baptist Temple continued identifying him as pastor for nearly another year.
When the newsroom reported the departure in February 2026, Click insisted it had been public. “Actually, it was very public. You just missed it,” he wrote on X. He did not identify an announcement when asked to provide one.
Click has said leaving day-to-day church leadership gave him greater freedom to travel and expand his national ministry. The police records do not establish that the departure was connected to the allegations later forwarded by Oregon authorities.
A resident recalls Click’s answer about sexual predators
The allegations have also prompted at least one local commenter to revisit Click’s performance at a Sandusky County Republican candidates’ forum earlier this year, including a question that now carries renewed significance.
“This explains his total deflection to the question of dealing with pedophiles during Republican candidates’ night prior to the primary election,” the commenter wrote. “Someone needs to pull that question and answer from video footage.”
The exchange is already part of the public record.
On March 19, 2026, Click appeared alongside Republican primary challenger Eric Watson at a forum hosted by the Sandusky County Republican Women. During the event, Click was asked how he would help fight sexual predators in Ohio’s 88th House District, which includes Sandusky and Seneca counties.
He did not directly answer the question.
Instead, Click pivoted to House Bill 693, legislation addressing parents who refuse to affirm a child’s gender identity, and discussed the treatment of transgender children in state child welfare policy.
“We’re calling Johnny Johnny and Susie Susie,” Click told the audience.
That response was documented by TiffinOhio.net on March 19, more than six months before the latest reporting on his police investigation.
The timing adds another dimension to the exchange. By the time Click appeared at that forum, Fremont police had already investigated the allegations against him and closed the case. The allegations had also been made public by The Rooster four months earlier.
Click did not mention the investigation during his answer about sexual predators. Instead, he directed his response toward legislation concerning transgender children, a subject that has been central to his political career.
The resident’s suggestion that the response reflected Click’s own circumstances is an interpretation, not something established by the recording or the police report. But the underlying exchange happened, and the lawmaker’s choice to answer a question about sexual predators by discussing transgender children is documented.
A history of defending political allies against scrutiny
The community reaction also arrives against a longer record of Click’s responses to allegations involving fellow Republican politicians.
Click previously called state Rep. Rodney Creech, a Republican from southwestern Ohio, his “good friend” and repeatedly praised him in public social media posts. Their legislative relationship continued after allegations surfaced that Creech had engaged in sexually inappropriate conduct with his minor daughter.
During the investigation, Creech acknowledged getting into bed with his daughter while wearing only his underwear but denied sexual misconduct. A special prosecutor described aspects of his behavior as “concerning and suspicious” but declined to file criminal charges.
Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman removed Creech from his committee assignments in May 2025 and asked him to resign. Creech refused. Huffman eventually restored his committee assignments in February 2026.
Click, who had publicly celebrated Creech as a friend, did not publicly join the calls for his resignation. Instead, the two continued cosponsoring legislation, including proposals Republicans promoted as protecting children from inappropriate adult conduct and requiring surveillance cameras in licensed child care centers.
Click also dismissed reporting about President Donald Trump’s relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein during a confrontation with Ohio journalist D.J. Byrnes in 2025.
“What are you gonna do when it comes out that that’s all fraud? And he’s not a part of that?” Click demanded when questioned about The Wall Street Journal’s reporting concerning a birthday card allegedly sent by Trump to Epstein.
Moments later, Click acknowledged he had not read about the birthday card.
“I haven’t even read about that birthday card,” he said. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
The recorded exchange showed Click suggesting that reporting involving a powerful political ally was fraudulent without having examined the specific report being discussed.
Those earlier episodes have taken on new relevance as residents revisit Click’s record. He has repeatedly presented child protection as a defining legislative priority, particularly when advancing restrictions on transgender health care and public performances. Yet his public conduct toward accused or scrutinized political allies has produced a very different record of confrontation and accountability.
Click calls the allegations malicious
After Fremont police received the Oregon referral on Sept. 29, 2025, Det. Sgt. Matthew Ranazzi located and interviewed the person identified as the alleged victim. The person denied having been beaten, starved or sexually assaulted by Click or their father and said they had never reported such abuse to anyone in Oregon.
Detectives visited Click’s home on Oct. 1. He was in Columbus, but later spoke with Ranazzi by telephone. Click told police he did not remember the person identified in the referral, although they “might have been a member of his church.” He also denied ever physically or sexually abusing anyone.
When Byrnes later confronted him on camera, Click described himself as having a clean conscience and repeatedly used the phrase “no there there” to reject the allegations. He called himself “squeaky clean” and “ivory clean.”
Click also challenged the characterization of his relationship with the family, insisting that merely attending Fremont Baptist Temple did not mean someone was a member of the congregation.
“Attended is not a member,” Click said. “There’s a lot of people that come and go. I do not know them.”
The allegations were not substantiated by the Fremont investigation. The person identified as the alleged victim denied them, the police closed the case and BCI declined additional investigation.
But that finding has not prevented some local residents from questioning Click’s conduct, reconsidering their experiences with his church and revisiting statements he made during his political career.
A controversy following Click toward Election Day
The allegations have surfaced again less than a month before Click faces Democrat Aaron Jones in the Nov. 3 general election. Click is seeking his fourth and final term in the Ohio House after narrowly surviving a Republican primary challenge earlier this year.
He also remains connected to prominent Republican campaigns. In December 2025, one month after the investigation became public, U.S. Sen. Jon Husted’s campaign identified Click as its Sandusky County chairman. The campaign again promoted his endorsement in March 2026.
For the residents commenting on the allegations, however, the controversy is not confined to Columbus politics or campaign endorsements. It reaches back into a Fremont church, its children’s programs and the personal impressions left by a pastor who served the congregation for nearly two decades.
One parent expressed relief at having taken their sons out of the church nursery. Another person said Click’s behavior around younger children had long made them uncomfortable. A third recalled a Republican candidates’ forum where Click was asked directly about sexual predators and spoke instead about transgender children.
The police investigation is closed, and Click denies the allegations. But the reaction among those residents shows that the allegations have consequences beyond the official disposition of the case: people who knew Click, worshipped in his community or listened to his political promises are reconsidering what they saw, heard and believed.
That scrutiny now follows Click into the final weeks of his reelection campaign, with the former pastor’s record of preaching child protection facing renewed attention in the community where he built his public career.
